Nike Cancels Potentially Offensive Betsy Ross Air Max Release After Colin Kaepernick Steps In

It started innocently enough: to celebrate of the Fourth of July, Nike would release a pair of shoes emblazoned with an 18th-century-version of the American flag (with stars for the 13 original colonies on its heels), according to the Wall Street Journal. But the Betsy Ross flag, as it’s known, is associated with an era of slavery in America and, in more recent times, has been used by alt-right extremists as a symbol of white supremacy, according to the NAACP. Former NFL player-turned-activist Colin Kaepernick, who extended his contract with the Swoosh last year, reportedly got wind of Nike’s decision to release the shoes and reached out to the brand to communicate the problem with the design. Nike listened to its partner and withdrew the shoe from retailers.

You might think this wouldn’t be controversial. Nike was this close to making a mistake when someone authoritative on the subject stepped in to educate the brand on the offensive nature of the flag, saving the brand from releasing a product with ties to white supremacy, and rescuing it from the imminent social media backlash.

However, the news that Nike canceled the shoe’s release was enough to stir the grandstanding bone in conservative commentators, and even one Extremely Mad politician. Governor of Arizona Doug Ducey announced on Twitter that following Nike’s decision to not release the shoe, he’s making a withdrawal of his own: Arizona will yank the financial incentives it was planning to give Nike for building a manufacturing plant in the state, trading away thousands of job opportunities to ostensibly own a few libs.

The cancellation of the has also turned it into a collector's item for some—StockX has sold pairs of the shoe for as much as $2,500 Tuesday.

Kaepernick and Nike have been a controversial pairing since the company made its official endorsement of him as an activist last September. When the partnership was announced, conservatives posted pictures and videos of themselves burning their Nike products. But Kaepernick’s ambassadorship has paid real dividends for Nike. Not just financially—yes, the brand’s sales lit up after the Kaepernick announcement—but also in ways dollars and cents can’t measure. To release a shoe promoting an alt-right adjacent symbol would have been discordant with much of what the company has done—and that’s made them successful!—over the past year. Withdrawing the shoe was a smart business decision: a brand shouldn’t reap profits from progressive causes like pro-LGBTQ rights and Black Lives Matter and then turn around and release a shoe adorned with a flag that feels offensive to those same communities.

This year, a number of luxury fashion brands have caused outrage by producing products that traffic in racist tropes, and have scrambled to put systems in place to avoid reaching that spot in the first place. Gucci, for instance, instituted a wide-ranging plan that includes a “multicultural design scholarship program” and the assembly of a “diversity and inclusivity awareness program” to prevent the company from releasing offensive designs. Nike, through its partnership with Kaepernick, has found a way to avoid that problem. And arguably, the controversy is striking for how uncontroversial it is: this is how the fashion industry should work.

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